China’s First Stock Exchange is a now a Forgotten Dusty Apartment Building

Tucked away in an inconspicuous alley of one of the last functioning old-town neighborhoods in Beijing, hiding in the shadows of the historic city gate that once guarded the direct entry into the imperial city, lies the dusty forgotten shell of the first Beijing Stock Exchange. For a country that has one of the world’s largest stock markets, I couldn’t quite believe what I was reading in the caption of the photograph I had stumbled upon.

Captured this September by Beijing based photographer, Jens Schott Knudsen, the caption reads: The former Beijing Stock Exchange (中原证券交易所) at 6.30am on a Sunday. Opened in 1918 and tucked away in an alley behind Qianmen, this was Beijing’s first stock exchange.